The misplaced brownness of Rishi Sunak

It doesn’t matter if the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is of Indian or Pakistani origin—his anti-migration and transphobic rhetoric can never be the ideal that any South Asian child looks up to 

The Internet went berserk last night when Indians received the ‘Diwali gift’ of their dreams when Rishi Sunak was appointed the prime minister of the United Kingdom after his rivals in the race–former PM Boris Johnson and House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt–for the top post bowed out at the last minute. Sunak replaces the lettuce-beaten Elizabeth Truss who survived less than 45 days in office, leaving behind a trail of economic malaise and an economy more crushed than the bottom-most leftovers of your Lays packet. 

Expectedly, the Indian social media was awash with memes around how Sunak will bring the Kohinoor back, the euphoria of desi moms and how he is a beacon of South Asian representation. Apart from the fact that the Sunak discourse conveniently shielded his massive privilege and generational wealth (he is the richest sitting British parliamentarian), the Internet’s glorious corners were–and still are–largely silent about his extremely chequered and problematic past. Instead of being the face of South Asian representation, the former Goldman Sachs banker is, in fact, the very antithesis of it. 

Where do we begin?

Only this summer, Sunak made headlines when he proposed ditching the practice of accommodating asylum seekers in hotels and instead putting them in cruise ships so that they are at least off land—a proposal that was met with ringing laughter from his colleagues in the cabinet meeting. He has committed to the Government’s Rwanda scheme, vowing to do “whatever it takes to get our partnership with Rwanda off the ground.”

Not surprisingly, Sunak even pledged to put a cap on the number of refugee arrivals, with the numbers to be “determined by need” and decided by Parliament, and to give authorities more power to “detain, tag and monitor illegal migrants.” What will this determination by need look like? God only knows best. How will the monitoring of “illegal migrants” ensure that their fundamental and universally acknowledged right of privacy is not exploited? No one really knows. 

In yet another gaffe in March this year–as part of a publicity stunt–Sunak faked a lower income to announce a cut in the price of petrol. Filling up a red Kia that was borrowed from a service station employee, he later proclaimed that the “most embarrassing thing” for him was that he struggled to pay for the fuel in a car that wasn’t his own. 

One can argue that we can’t really expect much from a 42-year-old zaddy who lacks popular mandate of the country and has ascended the top post solely by function of his wealth. Can we really expect empathetic, sound policy approaches from a man who once told a bunch of schoolboys that he was a “total coke addict” before clarifying, with a small, snorting laugh, that he was referring to Coca-Cola? Or, someone who famously owns a $200 “smart mug” that heats itself? 

The irony of this representation is not limited to Sunak but extends to his Conservative Party. In relative terms, his party is much less white today. The rising star is Kemi Badenoch, who lived in Nigeria until she was 16 years old. And yet the anti-migration policy of the party continues unabated. On August 25 this year, during the TalkTV leadership hustings, Sunak made it abundantly clear that trans women are not really women. Previously, he had also affirmed his plan to “protect the words man, woman and mother” so that he can “crack down on woke nonsense.” 

An inability to see potential flaws? 

For anyone following British news on the daily, these comments shouldn’t come as a surprise, for they understand the exclusionary, devious and harmful policies of the Conservative Party and Sunak’s place in it. However, as Indians first and South Asians second, we do great damage by propping Sunak on the pedestal of peak representation. We do our children a disservice by waging a man clothed in privilege with his designer slips and smart mugs, with his boomer approach to gender and identity and his terrible, almost caricature-like approach to the life-and-death issue of migration. After all, it’s the ideals that we set for ourselves and our children that dictate the philosophy undergirding their adult selves. This ideal, at least for an Indian with a bloody past of imperialism and war, cannot really be based on a man simply because he is brown and Hindu.

While the Indian youth suffers under the crumbling weight of a historic unemployment, it is pertinent to note that Sunak basks in the glory of his wealth: A mansion in West London; a house in Santa Monica, California; and a Georgian-era home in Yorkshire with an ornamental lake and a swimming pool. Are we invited?

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